Today In History • 1586 - Englands Queen Elizabeth I confirms death sentence against Mary Queen of Scots. • 1691 - Hapsburgs re-conquer Transylvania and are recognised as its rulers. • 1791 - Britains Observer newspaper is first published. • 1812 - Peter Gaillard patents the power mower. • 1842 - Spanish soldier-politician Baldomero Espartero bombards Barcelona and crushes revolt. • 1851 - Louis Napoleon crushes workers rebellion in France. • 1877 - Thomas Edison invents the phonograph in his New Jersey laboratory at Menlo Park. • 1878 - A proclamation by Commander RC Dryer is ratified by British Letters Patent, and the annexation of Walvis Bay to the Cape of Good Hope is subsequently authorised. 1900 – 1980 • 1908 - London naval conference fails to regulate conditions of warfare. • 1942 - US bombers attack the Italian mainland for the first time during World War II. • 1945 - The US Senate approves American participation in the United Nations. • 1958 - Niger becomes an autonomous republic within the French Community. • 1961 - Tanganyika becomes the 104th member of the United Nations. • 1962 - North Rhodesias first African-dominated government is formed under Kenneth Kaunda. • 1962 - Hundreds of Muslim and European opponents of the Ben Bella government in Algeria are arrested. • 1971 - Indian troops, tanks and planes launch attacks in East Pakistan - now Bangladesh, and hit key airfields in West Pakistan, which is now Pakistan. • 1972 - Government of Honduras is overthrown in military coup. • 1977 - Jean-Bedel Bokassa, ruler of the Central African Empire, crowns himself emperor in a ceremony believed to have cost more than US$100 million. He was deposed two years later. • 1978 - Dianne Feinstein becomes San Franciscos first woman mayor when she is named to replace George Moscone, who had been murdered. 1980 – 2000 • 1980 - The bodies of four American nuns slain in El Salvador two days earlier are found. Five national guardsmen are later convicted of the murders. • 1984 - A five-day hijack drama begins as four men seize a Kuwaiti airliner en route to Pakistan and force it to land in Tehran. Two American passengers are killed by the hijackers. • 1987 - Cuban inmates at a federal prison in Atlanta free their 89 hostages, peacefully ending an 11-day uprising. • 1988 – Namibia: The Mukorob, also known as The Finger of God, near Tses collapses during a heavy storm. • 1988 - The government of Argentina announces that hundreds of heavily armed soldiers had ended a four-day military revolt. • 1991 - AP Middle East Correspondent Terry Anderson is freed by Shiite Muslim captors in Lebanon after nearly seven years as a hostage. • 1991 - Pan American World Airways ceases operations. • 1992 - US President George HW Bush orders more than 28 000 American troops to lead a mercy mission to Somalia, threatening military action against warlords and gangs who block food for starving millions. • 1996 - The Constitutional Court approves the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa. • 1996 - Nasa launches a spacecraft to Mars carrying the first-ever interplanetary rover, a six-wheeled cart that will roam the frigid Martian surface in search of rocks. • 1998 - A Chinese entrepreneur is tried in Shanghai on charges of providing e-mail addresses to an online democracy magazine. 2000 – 2010 • 2001 - Former South African first lady and ex-wife of FW de Klerk, Marike de Klerk, is found murdered at her home in Cape Town. • 2005 - Incumbent Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has ruled oil-rich Kazakhstan since Soviet times, easily wins a new seven-year term in presidential elections. • 2006 - The Guayana Shield region, a swath of Amazon rain forest, is placed under government protection in a region infamous for violent conflicts among loggers, ranchers and environmentalists. • 2007 - Syrian archaeologists announce they have unearthed two Bronze-era cemeteries dating from the 18th century BC, the third set of ancient graveyards found in less than a month. • 2008 - Zimbabwe declares a national emergency over a cholera epidemic and the collapse of its health care system. • 2010 - Spain places striking air traffic controllers under military authority and threatens them with jail terms in an unprecedented emergency order to get planes back in the skies and clear chaotic airports clogged with irate travellers. – On This Day In History, Today In History
Posted on: Wed, 04 Dec 2013 15:03:48 +0000
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